Estimating the Economic Value of Tourist Attractions Using Travel Cost Method (Case Study: Namir Garden, Yazd Province)

Economic valuation of tourist attractions can be very effective in determining needs, eliminating deficiencies, and as a result tourism development. So, the present study was conducted to estimate the economic value of Namir Garden in Yazd province using the individual travel cost method. In this method, the travel cost production function was estimated based on semi-logarithmic from and using the ordinary least squares regression method (OLS). According to the results, the variables of travel cost and arrival time are effective factors on the number of annual visits. The number of visits decreases by 0.001 and 0.5850 percent by increasing one unit in traveling cost and reaching time to the garden, respectively. The consumer surplus per visit was estimated 21000 Rials and the total average recreational value of the household was estimated 913500 Rials per year.